I make no criticism of the staff, who I think have been hardworking and absolutely brilliant throughout the pandemic, but the First Minister needs to stop hiding behind them, because this is a matter of leadership and that is something that she is responsible for.

I repeat: flu pandemic planning that the Government carried out repeatedly highlighted vulnerabilities in PPE supplies and in social care. Had the First Minister paid attention to that, as she says that she did, we would not be in this position.

Nowhere has the impact of the pandemic been more distressing than in our care homes. One in every three people to have lost their lives from Covid-19 were care home residents. That is more than 3,000 families who have been bereaved by an epidemic that raced through our care homes—the very places where we expect our elderly and our vulnerable to be safe.

However, concerns about the ability of social care to cope during a pandemic were highlighted five years ago by exercise Cygnus. Exercise Silver Swan recommended that the Government

“Ensure a wide understanding of plans for distribution of PPE and prioritisation of key staff”.

That recommendation was made in April 2016. It was the end of March 2020—nearly four years later, when the country was already gripped by the pandemic—before the Scottish Government had a PPE distribution model for social care. We know that the PPE was not adequate and there was an initial shortage of supply because health and social care staff told us so. I see that the First Minister is shaking her head, but those are the very staff we praise for their efforts and they were telling us what was going wrong.

Had the First Minister listened to the warnings about the threat facing social care in a pandemic—and, yes, in the context of flu pandemic planning, too—lives could have been saved. Why did she not listen?